"Though many lab simulations of this effect have been performed recently, including at a new acidification laboratory in development at Scripps, there have been few comparable field studies. Using sensors recently developed at Scripps, the researchers surveyed marine ecosystems ranging from coral reefs in the South Pacific Ocean to volcanic CO2 vent communities in the Mediterranean Sea.

They found that in some places, such as Antarctica and the Line Islands of the south Pacific, the range of pH variance is much more limited than in areas of the California coast subject to large vertical movements of water known as upwellings.
In some of their study areas, they found that the decrease in seawater pH being caused by greenhouse gas emissions is still within the bounds of natural pH fluctuation.

Some areas already experience daily acidity levels that scientists had expected would only be reached at the end of the 21st Century.
"This study is important for identifying the complexity of the ocean acidification problem around the globe," said Scripps marine biologist Jennifer Smith."

The Daily Mail article
indicates that Ultimo lingerie had a good year, attributing the success
to the correct selection of underwear models, namely Tamara Ecclestone,
Amy Childs, and the divine Luisana Lopilato, aka Mrs. Michael Buble.
(More on her soon, I promise.) But the basic premise of the article is
that if you're selling lingerie, cleavage and a tight tummy sell well.
Now, why do I not in any way find that particularly surprising?

New research shows that bioluminescent bacteria use the glow to get eaten by shrimp; when the shrimp eat enough bacteria, the bioluminescence shows up in their gut, attracting fish. The fish eat the shrimp, swim around, then poop out the remnants and the bacteria, which are just fine after spending time in the digestive system of the shrimp and the fish. So this helps the bacteria move to new locations. Not only that, while they're in the guts of the shrimp and the fish, they eat some of the other stuff that's in there!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Great news about the
EPA's new rules to restrict the emission of mercury, which is a useful
metal, but not one that anyone wants more of in the atmosphere and in
the Earth's biological cycles. Now, the articles indicate that
compliance will cost money, which means that a regulation such as this
might end up in the target reticule of the GOP enviro-bombers. But
here's the deal; if the GOP runs against the EPA rules against mercury,
which will reduce the levels of mercury in the environment, making fish
safer to eat, allowing pregnant women to ingest more food without
worrying as much about the neurological health of their fetuses (and
fetuses are something that the GOP faithful are blood-sworn to protect),
and even protecting sushi-eating celebrities like Jeremy Piven and
Daphne Zuniga from mental and physical problems caused by too much
mercury ingestion -- then the Democrats can run as if the GOP was in
FAVOR of poisoning pregnant women, fetuses, and sushi-eating
celebrities. Well, maybe they should just mention the first two. But I
think the GOP would be pretty darned stupid to run in opposition to
this necessary and welcome rule.

Now, the GOP is pretty darned stupid, so I expect to see this mentioned prominently next year.

Enceladus' mean radius is 252 km; Earth's Moon is 1738 km, so Enceladus is roughly 1/6 to 1/7 the size of Earth's Moon.

It takes Enceladus 1.37 days to orbit Saturn once; obviously it takes Earth's Moon about 28 days. The semi-major axis of the orbit of Enceladus is 238,000 km. Assuming circularity (this is a rough calculation), then the circumference of the orbit is 1,495,398 km - close enough to 1,500,000 km.

The semi-major axis of the Moon's orbit is 385,000 km, so the circumference of the orbit is about 2,420,000 km.

OK, it's time to ramp up the harvest efforts. Start marketing them as an aphrodisiac and penis enlargement supplement.

"These fish really stay put, at least in our system," Zachary Jud, a
marine scientist at Florida International University, said. "We've had
some fish that stayed in the same spot for months. The greatest distance
some moved was a couple hundred feet."

Because adult lionfish tend to stay in one place, efforts to keep
down their numbers by capturing or spearing them have been successful.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Anytime you're with a supermodel (swimsuit type) that apparently is really in love with you, and who lets you write songs about having sex in the morning with you (at least according to their joint interview in Sports Illustrated) then it's a very good idea to get engaged (and perhaps eventually married) to her.

Chrissy's Me in My Place pictures -- I'm going to review them soon, all the ones I haven't reviewed yet. Which is a few. But reviewing the ones I've viewed is a pleasing activity. As for hers, best picture is #12, best comment is #16.

Monday, December 26, 2011

I just happened to see the trailer for "John Carter" yesterday -- and it was good. Now, I commented on the John Carter movie here -- with a lot of commentary on Dejah Thoris, including a link to a modestly nude Lynn Collins, who plays Dejah. (Apparently this is the extended trailer, but it's the one that caught my eye.)

So, without further ado, here's the trailer (and there are resemblances to both Star Wars and Dune):

Lynn as Dejah looks good too; good choice for one of the most iconic sci-fi fantasy (the Edgar Rice Burroughs wing of the genre) heroines ever.

Now about the plot; I still wonder how much resemblance it will have to the Burroughs books. But Carter is still apparently a Civil War vet.

After reading the article linked below, I did a quick search, saw some video, read a little, and I guess they're somewhat related to brine shrimp and Triops. So that's all I know now -- and that they're endangered. I wish that wasn't the case, but it's the case with a lot of species these days.

Pond Conservation's Dr Jeremy Biggs said: "With only a handful of
sites across the whole of Britain, the future of these beautiful
creatures is balanced on a knife-edge."

It is that hoped fairy shrimps (Chirocephalus diaphanous),
which are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act, will return to
their "strongholds" this Christmas in Hampshire's New Forest, on the
edge of Dartmoor in Devon, on Salisbury Plain, in parts of the Sussex
Weald, as well as in Oxfordshire, East Anglia and South Wales.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Good news; pending construction of several new nuclear plants, the U.S. has approved the new pressurized reactor design from Westinghouse. This will quiet the critics and push forward construction of several new power plants in the United States.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Somehow, even though the altitude is 130 miles, it seems like that's dangerously close. But to put it in perspective, that's a little more than the distance from Indianapolis, Indiana to Louisville, Kentucky. So it's not exactly in danger of crashing.

1. Andy Murray will win a Grand Slam (tennis) title.2. Khloe Kardashian will get pregnant.3. Barack Obama will be re-elected President.4. There will be a "reverse Climategate" with emails from climate change skeptics, showing how they conspire together to distribute the same tired talking points.
5. At some point in the year, the Dow Jones will go below 10,000.6. The Washington Wizards will make the NBA Playoffs.7. The year's biggest movie will be "The Hobbit".8. Kepler will find an exoplanet with near-perfect conditions for Earth-like life.
9. Another famous celebrity will pose nude for Playboy (wow, like that's a stretch).10. I'll have more than 100 followers on Twitter.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Short article from the Texas SeaGrant explaining about the danger to the local ocean ecosystem from lionfish and black tiger shrimp. See, the thing is, both of them can be eaten, and they taste good. And the black tiger shrimp can be BIG.

"Lionfish, too, are a marketable fish, but on a much smaller scale.
They are best caught using traps or by spear gun and are considered a
delicacy in Asia, but they have yet to gain popularity in the U.S.

Harvesting lionfish for the restaurant trade appears to be
to be an effective method for controlling local population densities in
the South Atlantic and Mexico, says Morris."

EAT MOR LIONFISCH!

The apparent main problem with the black tiger shrimp is that they can spread diseases to other shrimp. But they're big and tasty:

"On the other hand, black tiger shrimp are a highly valuable commodity,
although Reisinger said he has heard anecdotal reports that some
shrimpers have thrown captured black tiger shrimp back into the Gulf of
Mexico because they did not think they were a marketable species. The
shrimp fetch a market price similar to native white shrimp and slightly
more than native brown shrimp. As of early December, the largest black
tiger shrimp were going for about $8.35 per pound on the New York
Market."

At this point, though, there aren't that many in Texas waters. But that could change.

“What is playing out in Washington, D.C., this week is about political
leverage, not about what’s good for the American people. Congress can
work out a solution without stopping the payroll tax-cut extension for
the middle class,” Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who served with House
Republicans for 4 1/2years until his appointment to the Senate in the spring, said in a statement."

"Better Choices for Virginia, a coalition of businesspeople, nonprofit leaders, local officials and educators, called on McDonnell to protect and create jobs instead of making cuts to schools, health care, public safety and other core services. It advocates for eliminating tax loopholes instead of a cuts-only approach to budgets.

Since the beginning of the recession, the coalition estimates that Virginia has cut $1.3 billion from education, $238 million from public safety and $994 million from health care."

Wow, this fight over the payroll tax cut extension has gotten nasty -- and based on the latest maneouvring, I think that the GOP has downright screwed itself. We'll see, but I think there are two key principles to remember about this:

1. There's no doubt about who's at fault for this mess, the Republicans, specifically the Tea Party.
2. When in doubt, blame the Republicans. You'll never be wrong.

"House Republicans have a point. Making tax policy two months at a time is no way to make tax policy. But House Republicans are the reason the Senate was opting for a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. If they agreed to a clean, year-long extension of the payroll tax cut, the bill could pass in the next 10 minutes.
Instead, they've opted to tie it to the Keystone XL Pipeline. And as bad as it is to make tax policy in two-month increments, it's even worse to make controversial energy and environmental decisions using unrelated tax-policy measures -- and their deadlines -- as cover."

Next - the answer is YES.
Question: "The opposition from Tea Partyers raises the question: Is denying Obama a victory — one that would help the economy, which could make Obama’s reelection prospects a shade brighter — a higher priority for them than even cutting taxes?"

Harry Reid: Payroll Tax Cut Bill Must Pass Without Further Negotiations
"My House colleagues should be clear on what their vote means today. If Republicans vote down the bipartisan compromise negotiated by Republican and Democratic leaders, and passed by 89 senators including 39 Republicans,their intransigence will mean that in ten days, 160 million middle class
Americans will see a tax increase, over two million Americans will begin losing their unemployment benefits, and millions of senior citizens on Medicare could find it harder to receive treatment from physicians," Reid said."

According to latest reports, the House is going to reject the Senate bill (passed with 89 votes, which means that a lot of sensible Republican senators -- a phrase that it is extremely hard for me to write -- voted for it. So the insane GOP in the House, led by Boner Boehner, are screwing the middle class.

"Alcohol consumption, especially heavy drinking, has long been
associated with HIV incidence. However, there have been doubts about
the cause-and-effect relationship. Researchers weren't sure if alcohol
consumption caused HIV via unsafe sex, or whether certain personality
traits in individuals, such as sensation-seeking or a disposition to
risky behaviour in general, would lead to both alcohol use and unsafe
sex.

The study, published in the January issue of the journal Addiction,
summarizes the results of 12 experiments that tested this
cause-and-effect relationship in a systematic way. After pooling the
results, the researchers found that alcohol consumption affects
decision-making, and that this impact rises with the amount of alcohol
consumed. The more alcohol that participants consumed, the higher their
willingness to engage in unsafe sex."

Well, actually, I guess there's a predilection for sex already established, and drinking just makes it more possible to do it without protection. But I think there's an obvious corollary that getting one's potential partner inebriated increases the chance of sex in general -- and since such random acts are unsafe to being with, whether or not protection is involved makes it even more unsafe at any speed.

OK, so how exactly did they test the relationship? I mean, how were they SURE that this was true?

It seems somewhat repulsive to say it, but if we converted all of the fecal material (human and animal) that we currently collect into biofuel, we'd have a lot of biofuel. And given the drawbacks to the other kinds of biofuel feedstocks that I discussed a few posts ago (in light of the article describing their drawbacks), maybe crap is the way to go for the biofuel industry.

Ever heard of a "freebie" list? It's defined as a list of women (for men) and men (for women) for which spouses would allow their spouse to enjoy sexual relations with, if such an unlikely chance ever arose. I was going back over my freebie list(s), and found the following:

Current all-time Top 5 Freebie List:1. All-around: Salma Hayek2. For the body: Julianne Hough3. For the attitude: Zoe Saldana (and she's currently single! I have a shot! NOT.)4. For the glory: Brooke Burke5. For fun: Kelly Ripa

OK, I am seriously ticked off at Congress for their naked political play to add the Keystone pipeline rider to the payroll extension bill. It is so damned obvious, bare knuckled politics. The best way to go for Obama is to not approve it, noting that the State Department won't approve it anyway if the proper environmental studies aren't finished, and so if he DID approve it and they didn't, there wouldn't be any pipeline anyway -- and rushing the approval process is a virtual guarantee of a thumbs-down from State. Now, the rude-as-nude GOP would try to spin the non-approval as an economy drag, and a capitulation to environmentalists, and that might play in the Heartland, but Obama needs votes in a lot of states (like California) where Keystone disapproval will play well widely. If he approves it, he loses a lot of votes of environmentally-minded independents. Now, given the intransigence of the GOP and the disaster that electing a Republican president in this environment would precipitate, I don't believe that most voters who recognize this danger would abandon the Prez even if he approves Keystone, but I also think that they (like me) would be much happier if he didn't.

So I really don't want to improve the approval ratings of the dismal GOP in Congress, but if that had to be done, electing a very gorgeous female representative who includes a Playboy appearance on her list of qualifications, such as just happened in Russia, might kick their percentage points up a few notches.

I've got to fix the headline a little; those who pose in Playboy are not by definition "bunnies".

Now, I don't know exactly how the Russian system works, but I think she actually got elected, not appointed. It could be that Putin appointed her to run for the seat as a representative of his party.

"Siberian hottie Maria Kozhevnikova, a member of Putin’s United Russia party, defended her boss days after winning a seat in Russian parliament to represent Tomsk."

Now, regarding the appearance in Playboy: searching reveals she did pose nude, i.e., without any clothes on, but strategic angles and artful placement of her blonde hair managed to prevent the exposure of those elements of the female physiology that would classify her as competely (alternatively, totally) nude. She's so beautiful and so fit it seems a shame that she couldn't just show her nipples too, but she didn't. Nonetheless, she's a fine-looking woman. I hope she will also be a credible representative of her constituents in Parliament.
Without much effort, all her pictures can be found, but I'll just provide a comely (and modest) picture of her.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Well, I know as I write this that there is a deal in Congress to avert a government shutdown (again). I haven't read the details. I hope sincerely and I hope a lot that the Keystone pipeline is off the table.

But I wrote this before that happened, and I think it's still a legitimate comment.

"Their objections center on several GOP initiatives added to the bill to attract votes from conservatives, many of whom would not support the tax cut extension otherwise. They include a reduction in unemployment benefits, new rules that could require the unemployed to take drug tests and enroll in GED programs to receive benefits, and the delay of new regulations on boiler emissions."

"French nuclear giant Areva said Tuesday it is suspending building work
at several sites in France, Africa and the United States, one day after
forecasting a 1.6 billion ($2.1 billion) euro loss."

France has been leading the way on continuing use of nuclear power in the world energy system; this latest setback is not very promising. Still, given China's nice words and slight bit of action in Durban, I think that the nuclearization of the Far East and India will continue apace.

Monday, December 12, 2011

EVEN though I'm a nuclear energy industry consultant and advocate, I recognize that the transportation sector will be reliant on liquid fuels for a long time (except maybe if widespread hydrogen production can result from the invention of solar-powered leaves

Now, burning of fossil fuels is not good for the Earth's climate future, but we have been led to believe that burning biofuels, fuels made from biologically-based feedstocks, would be fine, because the logic goes that the biological things took the CO2 out of the atmosphere, so burning them just puts the CO2 back where it was.

Now, their has been a knock on corn ethanol because it requires a lot of input to grow corn. But supposedly stuff like switchgrass works better. So here's what they did:

"The researchers focused on the major mandated and currently used biofuels worldwide: corn ethanol, soybean biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass grown in the United States, canola biodiesel produced in Europe, and sugarcane ethanol produced in Brazil and exported to the United States or Europe.

They evaluated them in terms of their contribution to reducing fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. They also compared their costs and effectiveness to two alternative policies: an increase in the gas tax and the implementation of energy efficiency improvements."

Results:""Each dollar spent on energy improvement programs would be 20 times more effective in reducing fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions than a similar cost for the corn ethanol program," Jaeger said. "Likewise, a gas tax increase would be 21 times more effective than promoting cellulosic ethanol."

YIKES. That's not even CLOSE.

Regarding the laws to produce a certain amount of biofuel: The researchers concluded that all of these biofuel mandates combined would reduce fossil fuel use by less than 2.5 percent, or the same amount that a gas tax increase of 25 cents per gallon could achieve, but at an estimated cost of $67 billion compared with a cost of $6 billion with a gas tax."

GEEZ, order-of-magnitude!!!

So I conclude that we should a) make hydrogen, b) increase nuclear power generation, as Bill Gates is working with the Chinese to do, c) drastically work on increasing energy efficiency, on a pseudo-war footing, if necessary, and d) pass an increase in the national gas tax.

There's much unwarranted debate about the reality of climate change, regarding whether or not the data is accurate, how much global warming is happening, whether or not it'll be serious, etc. When "cornered", such as when the Berkeley preliminary announcements came out, before the counter attacks were organized and mounted, some of the skeptics denied (ha) that they had denied global warming is actually happening, insisting instead that they are just disputing how much is happening, how it's happening, and how much eventually will happen in the future.

Part of that argument was completely disingenuous, because the entire point of casting uncertainty on the ground station weather data was to attribute a warming signal to something else, like increasing urbanization or the installation of a nearby air conditioner. And it was also disingenuous because all but the really marginal skeptics admit that the atmospheric data is showing warming too (though atmospheric warming scientist Roy Spencer blaims it on warmth manufactured by increasing cloud cover, or something silly like that).

Leaving that aside, one of the potent reminders that global warming is REAL and is HAPPENING is that the denizens of nature are responding to it. And this article is another example of that.

"Moving to the north doesn't help them, because tropical temperatures do not change very much with latitude. So moving up to higher elevations is the only way to go, but there are few historical data that can serve as baselines for comparison over time."

"Earlier this week, the number two Republican in the Senate, Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), said that there would be no further negotiation regarding the payroll tax cut, and that the bill that comes from the House -- which includes Keystone -- is the one the Senate must pass.

"The package that comes from the House is it," Kyl said. McConnell declined to specifically say whether he agreed with Kyl.

McConnell said that a "significant number of Democrats" both in the Senate and House support the package Obama has promised to veto."

Can you believe the gall of these bastards?

Once again, the Republicans simply have to play politics. As has been widely described, they are getting squeezed on the payroll tax issue. Let it lapse, and it's their fault that the average Americans get a tax increase. After all, this is the party that defined letting temporary tax cuts lapse and the tax brackets go back to where they were (which is what has to happen for the disastrous W Bush-era tax cuts) as a tax increase. Dolts. But by that logic, letting the payroll tax lapse is a tax increase, and we know the GOP can't abide a tax increase. Oh yeah, and letting the payroll tax cut lapse could also hurt the economy by impacting average American buying power.

They're also getting squeezed because the way proposed to pay for the payroll tax cut extension is a small little increase on millionaires. But that can't happen because a) it's a tax increase, and b) it's on the 1% or so of the people that the GOP is protecting at all costs so that they can keep every little bit of their millions.

This is intolerable. (For the GOP, that is.)

Faced with intolerability, the GOP has decided to punish the President, and human society in general, by trying to force the President to sign a fast-track for the Keystone pollution-importing, climate-damaging tar sands oil pipeline. They want to make the President veto it, so that they can claim that the President isn't interested in creating jobs (even if they are unsustainable jobs in the climate-damaging energy industry) and that he was the one that blocked the payroll tax cut extension, rather than their holier-than-thou selves. [Oh yeah, and they also want to roll back pollution regulations and make a few spending cuts while they're at it.]

Because this is utterly bodacious politicking, we can see through all the holes in this tactic. For once it would be frigging refreshing if the GOP would do something for the good of the country rather than try to twist every possible situation into something that might possible make it harder for Obama to get reelected. If they really wanted to gain friends in the independent middle class (and that represents a lot of voters), tax the millionaires, pass the extension, and see what happens. I'll bet, except for the Tea Party howlin' Jims, that this would actually go down well politically on a lot of fronts. But don't tell that to the lame old men in the Senate and the House who claim to have been elected for the good of the American people.

Because they're only in it for themselves. And their millionaire cronies.

After seeing her training regimen in the "Lindsey Vonn: In the Moment" documentary, I can understand how she's capable of something like this. But it's still pretty amazing to actually witness her dominance.

"Mörner also claims in the Spectator article to speak on behalf of the
INQUA (the International Union for Quaternary Research) commission on
Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, whose members he says are "the
world's true experts on sea level" – as opposed to the IPCC, which he
asserts has "hijacked and distorted" the data. Mörner was indeed
president of this commission until 2003. However, as documented by the Carbon Brief,
INQUA now clearly dissociates itself from Mörner's views. Current
president of the INQUA commission on Coastal and Marine Processes,
Professor Roland Gehrels of the University of Plymouth, says his view do
not represent 99% of its members, and the organisation has previously
stated that it is "distressed" that Mörner continues to falsely
"represent himself in his former capacity."

This is how Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain described the climate policy challenge in 2005 and, if anything, his statement is more germane now given prospects for prolonged international financial ills:

“The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge.”

And this will hold true until such time that it becomes clear that the risks to the economy have become so great that action needs to be taken on climate change -- at which time it will be too late.

Late news from Durban is that countries have agreed to limit carbon emissions (CO2) starting in 2020 -- which is eight years too late. But not one country is willing to sacrifice any tiny bit of its economy, until imminent danger looms.

Bottom line: we, collectively as humanity, and the Earth we live on, are in trouble for a host of different reasons.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

In case you haven't heard, next week (just after the total lunar eclipse that I am not longitudinally privileged to witness) a sungrazing comet is going to graze the Sun. According to the following article, we can watch the SOHO observations as-it-happens:

When someone is doing some kind of behavior that is bothering you, the first natural reaction is to ask them to stop, hopefully politely. If that doesn't work, then the next step is commonly to complain to them more vigorously, or attempt to find a way to make the person stop what they're doing. (Like calling security, or the authorities). If that route wasn't available, the next step after complaining and stronger appeals to desist might be physical force.

The aggravation factor might be compounded if the person doing the annoying thing isn't aware of it, or worse, IS aware of it but either denies that it's annoying, or doesn't admit that it's as annoying as you find it. That perception can lead to real disagreements and a real downside to any action that the offendee might make on the offender.

Of course, if there's a way to escape being influenced by the behavior, then that's a good way to go. But what if there wasn't?

Take as a somewhat gross example that you are unfortunately sitting next to someone on a bus who is regularly and strongly passing very odoriferous intestinal gas. You could ask them to stop, but they might not be able to. You could complain to them and hope they'd get off, get some Gas-X, and get on a different bus. If the bus wasn't crowded, you could try to move away from them. But how would you feel if you got to the point where you just flat out told them how obviously awful it was (which could have several backup passenger attestations), and they said either:

"Oh, just get used to it, it's not that bad," or"So what, it's bad, what are you going to do about it?" or
"You gotta a problem with me? It's a free country," etc.

You and the other affected passengery would probably be ticked off at the offender's lack of awareness, sensitivity, and politeness. There is obviously a reasonable solution to someone really offensive and really unaware/obstinate about it, which would be to escort them off the bus. Might take a few people to do it. Which at a certain level is something that the gassy offender should have taken upon to do themselves -- get off and walk, before precipitating a conflict.

Well, right now the citizenry of China reminds me of passengers on a bus trapped breathing the emanations of a wealthy gassy person on a bus who is trying to get them to live with it by passing out small amounts of money. Even though the money is good, the citizens are getting more and more fed up with the situation, particularly because the person passing the gas still doesn't admit it's becoming
a serious problem. So these people are complaining that the person really has to be aware that he's offending them so badly, and do something, like get off the bus or change his/her diet.

"Competitor Tencent's weibo users' posts on pollution generated a whopping 68 million comments, boosting the topic to the fourth most-discussed of the day.

Some linked the toxic air to other hot issues of the day, such as a manhunt for the bomber of a bank in central China, or a yoghurt drink made by Coca Cola that was deliberately poisoned, killing one.

"The bank explosion in Wuhan, poisoned milk in Changchun, serious air pollution in Beijing... Can we live or not? Or is it that I pay too much attention to the dark side of society?" web user Gaiyong wrote."

Weibo user "T_maoyangshenghuo" reacted angrily at comments from the spokesperson of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau saying the smog in Beijing caused "slight pollution" over the last two days.

"Beijing citizens are speechless. Where is the serious pollution? In the brain of the spokesperson?" the message said.

"For a quarter of the year, we can't see beyond 500 metres (yards) and the government shamelessly declares that air quality is good," said one critic on Sina's weibo, a hugely popular microblog. "Can't they tell us the truth?"

So the Chinese people are ticked off, and one of the things ticking them off is that the government isn't admitting the seriousness of the problem. I have often stated that China's environmental problems will lead to civil unrest. And the tone of these responses to the irritation, health effects, and disruption is that they're getting ticked off enough to consider throwing the Chinese government off the bus.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

I haven't had a chance to say much about the adorable Cheryl Cole since the U.S. X-Factor fiasco. Despite admiring other beauties, Cheryl is still highly appealing to my sensual sensibilities.

So to read that she's put some womanly curves back on her frame suits me just fine.
And even though Derek Hough finally got fed up with Dimples' indecision, I think if he's somewhere reading this, he must have released a soft exclamation, such as "Oh God..."
'

Monday, December 5, 2011

I focus on what I still know to be a problem. Gingrich is the current GOP flavor of
the month, but I'm starting to sense a potentially brokered convention (even
though most opinion is that the rules make that very, very unlikely). But
if it happens, it'll be in Florida. And that leads to the nightmare scenario
which I plan to describe shortly.

"Yet Romney still can’t take off, and a lot of ink and online pixels have been spent
trying to explain why. I see four factors holding Romney back. That he is a
flip-flopper is no longer a charge by his opponents; it is taken as a given.
His refusal to repudiate his Massachusetts health-care plan goes down badly with
conservatives. His public personality is, well, stiff and patrician enough that
the Internet is now full of videos of Romney’s awkwardness. And he is a Mormon,
a problem for some conservative evangelicals."

[He didn't say: five, he's too rich, and that won't play well with a dissatisfied
middle, and the Obama campaign is itching to label Romney with the "too-rich-for-you" stamp.]

I, certainly echoing others and not forming my opinion independently, have always
thought that we could, collectively, do a much better job on energy efficiency.
The linked article, despite discounting the need for continuing investment in
nuclear power (I don't think the goals are fully achievable, but they are good goals
nonetheless), describes what energy efficiency could do for the country thusly:

"Due in part to a significantly increased emphasis on energy efficiency, power sector
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2020 would fall 25 percent below 2010 levels; by 2050,
such pollution would be 81 percent below 2010 levels. Under status quo trends, CO2 emissions
would grow 28 percent from current levels by 2050."

If those numbers are achievable, it will take uniform will from the populace to get
there. But we should.

The veterans' committee of the Baseball HoF has elected superior Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo, who died last year from complications of diabetes after losing both legs to the disease. Not only was Santo statistically sound as a Hall-of-Famer, he played loyally on a team that never made the playoffs the whole
time he was on it, and I don't think that he played on any other teams. A very, very deserving choice.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

It's been obvious for most of this Congressional session that the insensible, intractable, implacable, immovable, irrevocable GOP conservatives have been running the show. The have also been running their leadership, throwing useful compromise positions worked out by their leadership onto the fire, and in so doing perplexing that same leadership. The number of times that John Boehner backtracked his positions so that they finally aligned with the Tea Party's ideological pinings was apalling. Mitch McConnell didn't have quite those obstacles to deal with, but he was an obstacle himself, declaring that some negotiating positions that the Democrats thought were good starting points were dead on arrival even before they had left the station!

But the GOP conservatives may have outsmarted and outflanked themselves on the payroll tax cut extension that they rejected a few days ago. One angle is that they did this to maintain poor economic conditions, because the vast majority of economists agree that reinstating the payroll tax will cause a reduction in economic growth and a likely maintenance of high unemployment, two factors that will influence President Obama's reelection chances negatively. Never mind the fact that doing this is bad for the country. Another angle is that they are so beholden to their wealthy campaign donors and their ideological positions that they cannot abandon those positions even if it becomes obvious that they're favoring the rich over the middle class and those lower than that.

So by rejecting the payroll tax extension, bugging Boehner and McConnell in the process (this was mainly a Senate thing), they hand the Dems a beautiful campaign issue, gift wrapped in time for Christmas. Maybe they won the day, but this could definitely turn into a turning point for Dem prospects in 2012.

Dems intend to relentlessly frame their message around this idea: They
want government to act to restore the middle class’s security and
future, while Republicans are implacably and ideologically hostile
towards any such government action, particularly if it means the wealthy
have to sacrifice anything in the process. Dems are gambling that the
public’s grasp of this basic difference in priorities between the
parties will overcome the GOP’s argument that Obama’s economic policies
have failed and continuing public unhappiness with Obama over chronic
economic suffering.

"Tonight's votes highlight a sharp contrast between the two parties:
Democrats voted to put more money in the pockets of the middle class
families who need it most, while Republicans would only support a bill
that exacts a price from middle class workers while protecting the
wealthiest Americans," Murray, the fourth-ranking Democrat, said.

which also has this:

President Barack Obama released his own statement to hammer the
middle class message that's emerging as a key theme of his campaign.
"Tonight, Senate Republicans chose to raise taxes on nearly 160
million hardworking Americans because they refused to ask a few hundred
thousand millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share," he
said. "That is unacceptable. It makes absolutely no sense to raise taxes
on the middle class at a time when so many are still trying to get back
on their feet."

There's a sports saying about teams in pennant races controlling their own destiny. With this rejection of the payroll tax extension, the GOP lost quite a bit of their control.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Kelly Brook, who has a body that was born to model lingerie (and this is something that she has done well and often, along with the occasional nude shot), can also model clothes. Even though she's not with Ultimo anymore (that's currently being fronted . . . by the extraordinary Luisana Lopilato, who I am going to write more about soon), she is with New Look. She has her name on and her body in New Look swimwear, and now New Look dresses. And the thing about Kelly that makes her so appealing, other than the obvious, is that she can look great in swimwear and when she turns the glamor on, she can look great in high society wear, too.

Speaking of lingerie, here's Kelly's 2012 calendar, in which she is in lingerie every month. There certainly isn't anything wrong with that. March is my favorite, but November is very darned appealing as well. I also think she might have been a little bit pregnant when these were shot. I don't know if this is New Look lingerie or not, but she's represented them before.

I"m somewhat fascinated by the biggest of the world's diamonds, so when the 110 carat yellow Sun Drop diamond went on sale at Sotheby's, I noticed. It sold to an anonymous buyer for $10.9 million dollars, which is not chump change. The shame of that is, we might never see it again. The buyer OUGHT to put it on display in a museum or jewelry store somewhere.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Manchester United is a storied soccer (football) team in the UK, with lots of championships and history and several players who have famously cheated on their WAGs. But enough about that. They play in the Barclays Premier League and though they aren't having the greatest season (just 2nd place!), they're still one of the best teams in the league.

Crystal Palace (which for a couple of years had a developmental team here in Maryland, which unfortunately failed in a rather ugly fashion) plays in the division below the Premier League. The leagues are kind of fun; every season the bottom teams in the Premier League get relegated to the lower division, and the top teams in the lower division move up.

So Crystal Palace beating Man U. is kinda like a Division 1-AA football team beating Alabama this year. Really unlikely, even if Man U. used its reserves and not its experienced vets in a Carling Cup quarterfinal.

Every week there seems to be another article with a health benefit of coffee (recently, this one about an apparently reduced rate of endometrial cancer). But it's not all about health; I was intrigued by the following article in which caffeine from coffee acts as a biomarker for sewage pollution, because all that coffee people are drinking results in a lot of pee, and the pee has residual caffeine in it. So when the pee gets in the water with raw sewage, the resulting bacterial contamination, usually some kind of E. coli, can get linked to the raw sewage because of the associated caffeine.

This particular MESSENGER picture of Mercury's surface (explained here) is the first one I've seen in awhile that causes the "reversing crater" illusion rather easily, in which the craters suddenly optically transform into bumps. Some of the original images of Olympus Mons on Mars did this too -- the caldera always looked like a bump until better images came along.

If the craters look like bumps, the small crater at mid-left seems to revert back to a crater easier than the others. And that's the weird thing about this illusion; when one bump switches back to looking like a crater, all of them do. The mind is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Since discovering that the truly
lovelicious Lindsay Price was pregnant, with the child sired by
celebrity chef and Aussie Curtis Stone, I have of course been awaiting
news of the birth with much anticipation. Well, she welped a male,
according to Wonderwall, and I'm sure lots of other sites by now.

One of the most odious and irresponsible op-ed columns I have ever read in the Washington Post -- apparently this is standard modus operandi from Mr. Thiessen. The Bush tax cuts are a major reason for the debt quandary / morass that the country finds itself in now. Any plan that cemented their permanence was not a sound, negotiable plan. The only reason for the Toomey plan was to save face, and likely also to cover a half-dozen Republican congressional hindquarters from podiatric retribution by the voters. The laughable attempts by punditry to point fingers of blame in anything but the direction of self, where it rightly belongs, would be comic theater were it not for the impact that they have on those who cannot have their minds affected by reason and logic.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Anne Hathaway has gotten engaged to her boyfriend Adam Shulman. Since she's been high-profile unlucky in love, it's nice to see that she's apparently with a nice guy. As for him (at least it would be for me), after watching Anne demonstrate her full repertoire of abilities with Jake Gyllenhaal in "Love and Other Drugs", I wouldn't let her get away. She was lithe, long*, lean, and lovely, and she did a decent acting job, too, even if her willingness to go completely nude didn't get an Oscar nom. She won an accolade from me.

* One of the reasons for her striking attractiveness while in the buff is the length of her back, which precedes a very lovely behind. I can demonstrate that tastefully:

If you want to just see Anne nude, finding stills (and probably videos) from the movie is not hard to do. But staying calm while viewing is harder to do. If I keep using the word "hard", you'll eventually figure out what I mean.

This footage of an under-the-ice brinicle descending to the seafloor and freezing hapless starfish in Antarctica is truly, wondrously, one of the most astonishing natural phenomena I have ever seen, and I've seen Madalina Ghenea, Leo DiCaprio's newest catch. (More on her and him soon.)

A little good news for nuclear - after an unnecessarily long shutdown period due to the unexpected mid-Virginia earthquake, the North Anna nuclear power plant is now back to normal operations at full power generating capacity. That should help restore confidence in the industry, and perhaps hopefully convince more of the general public that nuclear makes sense for America.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Took a train trip to Vermont for an old-fashioned Thanksgiving this past week. Had lots of time away from the computer to think and ponder and mull and consider. Passed through NY on the way, which was interesting. So more later. I'm still fine and feisty.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Skeptics may not believe it, and may think that both Malthus and Paul Ehrlich were wrong, but the Earth's agricultural sector is running out of land, time, and the ability to feed the world's increasing population.
And climate change is going to make it even harder to address the problem.

Call them Cassandras, but those that say resources are eventually going to reach their finite limits are likely right. There are limits to how much food we can produce from this Earth. And I sure don't want to be eating gourmet Soylent Orange and Soylent Green.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

One of the reasons that I'm grateful for the success of the Twilight saga is that it made Ashley Greene a celebrity, and I think in sheer opinion that she is the most classically beautiful brunette in show biz since Jaclyn Smith. She looked great at the Breaking Dawn premiere.

Jennifer Love Hewitt, who's had her look and fashion ups-and-downs, was positively uplifting, and I mean that in the best way. Or should I say... naah, you can see what I'm thinking. Most of them, anyway.

"The grim reality for environmentalists is that no single renewable energy resource, from wind power to solar energy through biofuels, has remotely become competitive with kilowatt hours of electrical energy generated by coal or oil-fired power plants. The debate pits those opposed to a transition to greener technologies to those considering the bottom line, despite greenhouse gas emissions.

Even worse for the environmentalists, the IEA report advocates that as a short-term solution, governments ought to reconsider nuclear power, as it produces zero CO2 emissions.

Projecting into the future the report notes, "A low-nuclear future would also boost demand for fossil fuels: the increase in global coal demand is equal to twice the level of Australia's current steam coal exports and the rise in gas demand is equivalent to two-thirds of Russia's current natural gas exports."

WHICH is why I am so steamed/peeved/frustrated by climate change skeptics. Were the urgency of climate change properly recognized, the logical path forward (which surprisingly is being recognized by oil-rich Middle East countries who are financing their future with oil money to build NUCLEAR REACTORS), then the nuclear industry would be seen as the way forward for security and civilization. The Fukushima disaster only made things worse, forcing otherwise level-headed countries like Switzerland to back away from nuclear. As their glaciers melt faster and faster, they may rethink that stance, but by then it may be too late. The IEA report should be heeded as prudent and reflective of the actual situation, and we collectively as individuals and countries will ignore it our peril, and particularly the peril to future human generations and the increasingly fragile remnants of the natural environment.

More about the warming aspect:

"The second consideration is the contentious issue of global warming, and the impact of traditional fossil fuel-fired power plants belching vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

While even the most diehard proponents of traditional power plant electrical generation to not deny that their facilities emit significant amounts of carbon dioxide, they denigrate the concerns of environmentalists as 'fuzzy science."

So, at the end of the day, the two fundamental issues facing the world's nations seeking to satiate their population's demand for reliable and inexpensive power devolve down to cost and scientific projections."

"Still, scientific studies only reach a certain audience. Weird weather is a far more powerful messenger. It’s been hard to miss the record flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and across the Northeast; the record drought and fires across the Southwest; the record multi-billion dollar weather
disasters across the country this year; the record pretty-much everything-you-don’t-want across the nation. Obama certainly noticed. He’s responsible for finding the cash every time some other state submerges."

And then there's Romney:

"In late October, however, he evidently felt he had no choice but to pin himself to exactly that wall and so stated conclusively: “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.” In other words, he not only flip-flopped to the side of climate denial, but did so less than six months after he had said no less definitively: “I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer… And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.” Note as well that he did so, while all the evidence, even some recently funded by the deniers, pointed the other way.
If he becomes the Republican presidential candidate as expected, this may be the most powerful weathervane ad the White House will have in its arsenal. Even for people who don’t care about climate change, it makes him look like the spinally challenged fellow he seems to be. But it’s an ad that couldn’t be run if the
president had okayed that pipeline."

Monday, November 14, 2011

Now, yes there are doubts. And I doubt there going to get it done, whereupon Wall Street will tank, and approximately $1 trillion dollars in paper losses later, the idiots in Congress (meaning the GOP) are going to look up from the damage of the catastrophe and ask, "Whuh the f*** happened, Vern?"
Well, one of the main problems is the no-win attitude exuding like slime from think- (using that word VERY loosely) tanks like the Cato Institute of GOP Brainless Pundits.
So, I ask, regarding the following, THIS is BAD?

Conservative analysts were stunned by the GOP decision to retreat from its hard-line stance against raising taxes above current levels. “I actually think the Republicans appear to be caving,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “There’s more of a likelihood of a deal today than there was a week ago.”

Because he's a partisan think-tank hack, Tanner uses the word "caving". I think there's a better phrase that can be used: "coming to a sensible bargaining position". So let's see how that sounds now:

Conservative analysts were stunned by the GOP decision to retreat from its hard-line stance against raising taxes above current levels. "I actually think the Republicans appear to be coming to a sensible bargaining position," said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "There's more of a likelihood of a deal today than there was a week ago."

See how much better that sounds? It even sounds good FOR THE REPUBLICANS. Now, I obviously have no love for the Republican horde in Congress, but coming to a deal is good for all of us, including them, much as I would hate for anything to help them.
Next:

"The GOP offer would reduce many lucrative tax breaks for upper-income households. But it would dedicate only a small portion of the proceeds to deficit reduction. In that regard, Robert Greenstein and Jim Horney of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argue that the GOP plan “appears designed to heighten the chances” that future rounds of deficit reduction “will focus almost entirely on spending cuts” — ultimately forcing lawmakers to decimate Medicare and Social Security."

After what I think was a much too overly cautious review, the earthquake-nicked North Anna Nuclear Plant has been approved for restart by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Now, I know that earthquake caught everybody by surprise, but it's really unlikely to happen again, and the review was basically due to the Fukushima fallout. (Sorry.) Here's hoping that at least here in the U.S., we get back to normalcy with nuclear.NRC approves North Anna restart
"The NRC’s independent actions included an Augmented Inspection Team (AIT) that examined the plant shortly after the quake, as well as a restart readiness inspection in mid-October. Both Dominion and NRC’s results showed only minor damage that did not affect North Anna’s safety systems."
One thing we know now for sure -- it was built good.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

It was fun watching England defeat Spain 1-0 in a friendly, but it was one of those soccer games where the losing team dominated. I was amazed at how easily Spain passed to the open man, and I was sure they were going to get the equalizer, but they didn't. Must feel good to the English, at least.

"Greenhouse warming today faces an even greater array of bogus counterarguments based on the uninformed interpretation of data from ice cores, erroneous views about natural carbon sources, alleged but unobserved alternative drivers of climate change, naive expectations of the time scales over which models and observations should match, and various forms of statistical chicanery and logical fallacy. Many of the arguments sound reasonable to an inexpert but intelligent layperson. Critics use the alleged ﬂaws to attempt to discredit the entire field.

Debates between mainstream scientists and silver-tongued opponents cannot be won by the side of truth no matter how obvious the fallacies may be to an expert. Incredibly, as recently as the mid-19th century, a highly charismatic figure calling himself “Parallax” devoted two decades of his life to crisscrossing England arguing that Earth was ﬂat. He debated legitimate astronomers—sometimes teams of them—in town-hall-type settings and wowed audiences."

So Marc Morano is nothing new. His brand of pragmatic conservatism, of calling for harassment and demonization of legitimate scientists and legitimate scientific inquiry, is typical of a pattern. A pattern of reaction to that which cannot be comprehended or accepted.

This is a quote:"Regional fisheries managers set quotas for these ocean-crossing species, which all countries in each region must agree to enforce. However, the lucrative lure of supply and demand often outweighs playing by the rules. As fish populations decline, rarity adds to their price, which spurs increased—and sometimes illegal—fishing. “This means the last bluefin is worth more than the boat that’s caught it,” Collette says."

"A new study finds that Fox News tends to feature guests who doubt the reality of climate change and stories that dismiss the need for action, while CNN and MSNBC tend to feature guests who assert the reality of climate change and the need for action. Interestingly, however, Fox tends to devote more attention to the issue than either CNN or MSNBC."

and and and

"As their content analysis indicates, at CNN/MSNBC there is a strong one-sided outlook offered on climate change that is consistent with expert agreement but that also reflects the position of most Democratic elites. At Fox News, there is a similarly one-sided outlook that dismisses the problem, tends to reject expert views, and reflects the position of most Republican elites."

and and and

"As depicted in the figure below from the study, Republicans who are heavier viewers of Fox News are more doubtful of climate change than their lighter viewing counter-parts. This finding is consistent with past theorizing that Fox reinforces and strengthens the views of Republicans who are predisposed to be more dismissive of the issue.

Similarly, Democrats who watch Fox News appear to be somewhat resistant to the typically one-sided messages found at the cable network, processing the counter-attitudinal arguments in a way that defends their pre-existing beliefs and opinions on climate change."

Let's put it more simply: people who watch a lot of Fox News know sh*t about climate change.